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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29552706">I know they said the end is near</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/dichotomy_of_good_and_evil/pseuds/dichotomy_of_good_and_evil'>dichotomy_of_good_and_evil</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Adorable Steve Rogers, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie) Spoilers, Battle of Wakanda (Avengers: Infinity War), Could be Romanogers if you squint, Gen, Get Rhodey his coffee, Guilt, James "Rhodey" Rhodes Needs a Hug, Literal Sleeping Together, Natasha Romanov Is Not A Robot, Natasha Romanov Needs a Hug, Nightmares, POV James "Rhodey" Rhodes, POV Natasha Romanov, Panic Attacks, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Rated for language and thematic elements, Steve Rogers &amp; Natasha Romanov Friendship, Steve Rogers Needs a Hug, Steve is definitely rolling his eyes, We love a man who calls Nat on her crap, but not necessarily, i hate thanos</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-02-19</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-02-19</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-15 20:40:20</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>3,581</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29552706</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/dichotomy_of_good_and_evil/pseuds/dichotomy_of_good_and_evil</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>"Natasha’s hands are on his shoulders, already trying to pull him out of the nightmare, when he opens his eyes.  They stare at each other for a long moment, until Steve drops his gaze.  'Thanks,' he whispers.  'I’m sorry I woke you.  Thanks for keeping me from waking the others.'</p><p>'Don’t worry about it,' she says, dropping her hands back to her sides.  'I was awake already.'</p><p>He nods and then just sits there.  He won’t meet her eyes again and it is so quiet and Steve, that big, stubborn, noble idiot, should never look this hopeless, this empty, this small.  Never, not if she can help it.</p><p>'Steve,' she says softly, and his eyes whip back up to hers.  'It was a nightmare that woke me.'"</p><p> </p><p>Missing moment from the end of Avengers: Infinity War.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Steve Rogers &amp; Natasha Romanov</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>13</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>I know they said the end is near</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Rated T for language and thematic elements.  In other words, it's no worse than the movie it's based on!  Feel free to skim the tags for more details of the story, though.  As I noted above, a POV character does experience a panic attack, so that's something to be aware of.</p><p>Yes, the title is a TSwift lyric.  Yes, I'm one of those people.</p><p>Obviously, I don't own any of these characters or settings or anything like that.  I'm just playing with someone else's toys.  But I hope you enjoy!</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <em>There is ash everywhere, the world is filled with it, she can’t see anything properly. She catches a glimpse of someone and her heart catches—it’s him, the person she’s been looking for. Yes, his back is turned, but she’s known him for so long, she would know him anywhere and he’s been at the back of her mind ever since— And then he turns and it’s not him. It’s Loki, hair long and greasy, a deranged glint in his eyes. His lips aren’t moving, but she can hear him. “Can you wipe out that much red? Dreykov’s daughter, São Paulo, the hospital fire? He told me everything. Your ledger is dripping, it’s gushing red!” And now he’s gone and where there used to be clouds of ash there’s oceans of blood, rolling toward her, phantom faces floating among it and she can’t breathe—</em>
</p><p>Natasha wakes, as she always does, silently and instantly. The room is dark, with the lumpy outlines of the half dozen of them that are left spread around it, asleep. They had barely been functional enough to make it back to the palace, and when Okoye had left them in a large sitting room they had collapsed almost immediately. After making sure that no one’s wounds were life-threatening, Natasha had crawled into a corner and closed her eyes, overwhelmed. It was all too much. In a moment she would get up and force them all to eat something. They had to keep going, had to fix this. She would go in a minute…</p><p>And now, who knows how many hours later, she’s awake again, trying to forget the nightmare. She isn’t even surprised that she’s fallen asleep on the floor—she has certainly done so enough times in the past. But she hurts all over, bruises and scrapes and so many strained muscles screaming in protest as she sits up and looks around. Yeah, she isn’t going to fall asleep again any time soon. There is a rising tide of cold horror in her stomach and a voice in the back of her head whispering, <em>you failed, you lost, they’re all dead because of you, even more red in that ledger</em>. She starts one of the breathing exercises she picked up somewhere along the way—in for four, hold for seven, out for eight. The corner of her mind that never shuts up, even in the most serious moments, wonders who taught her this. It seems too kind for the Red Room, but a panicking Widow would be no use to them, so maybe they would have given it to her anyway. Or SHIELD, though she can’t picture Coulson or Fury teaching her breathing exercises. <em>What happened to Fury</em>, she starts to wonder, but shuts down the question as soon as she can. That way lies madness.</p><p>A slight noise interrupts her reverie, almost a whimper. It dies away after a moment, but Natasha is already on her feet, straining her ears for anything more and scanning through the dimness as best she can for what might have made it. It comes again a moment later, so quiet but obviously the sound of someone in pain, someone scared. She is already moving toward it, toward what she guesses is a sofa, its back toward her. The sound is still coming, sending an even colder thread of worry through her already roiling gut, when she comes around the sofa arm and can just barely make out Steve, still in his tac gear, slumped over and asleep in the corner of the sofa, fists clenched, lips moving softly but unceasingly. As she watches, he grows more restless, head turning back and forth, hands clenching and unclenching on air. And then he starts muttering, “Sam, no, come back. Get your boots on the ground—it’s too dangerous. Wanda, I’m so proud of you, but stay here, behind me. Nat, what do you think? Something’s wrong, I can feel it. Buck, hold on. Hold on, Bucky, I’ve got you! Buck—”</p><p>Natasha’s hands are on his shoulders, already trying to pull him out of the nightmare, when he opens his eyes. They stare at each other for a long moment, until Steve drops his gaze. “Thanks,” he whispers. “I’m sorry I woke you. Thanks for keeping me from waking the others.”</p><p>“Don’t worry about it,” she says, dropping her hands back to her sides. “I was awake already.”</p><p>He nods and then just sits there. He won’t meet her eyes again and it is so quiet and Steve, that big, stubborn, noble idiot, should never look this hopeless, this empty, this small. Never, not if she can help it.</p><p>“Steve,” she says softly, and his eyes whip back up to hers. “It was a nightmare that woke me.”</p><p>His brow furrows for a minute. “You get those? I’ve never noticed it.”</p><p>“Yeah. All the time. But life in the Red Room encourages you to learn very quickly how to have your nightmares silently, so… it’s hard to notice.”</p><p>“Oh.” He winces, and looks away again.</p><p>She should go back to her corner and try to get some more sleep. She knows it, she’ll need the energy for whatever the hell it is they try to do now. But she can’t. It’s all too much. And Steve still looks so small and sad. She taps him on the shoulder. “Are you going to go back to sleep?”</p><p>He shakes his head. “I doubt it.”</p><p>“Come on then. If we’re going to be awake, we might as well start planning, and we shouldn’t wake the others.” She starts to pick her way toward the door. She doesn’t bother looking back—she can hear the faint sounds of movement behind her and knows it’s him. As she reaches the door, she glimpses Thor sprawled in an armchair in the corner, with the raccoon on a couple of pillows on the floor nearby.</p><p>The hallway is dark, but not impossible to navigate, and Natasha pauses to let Steve catch up, watching as he closes the door of the sitting room softly behind him. She can feel herself on edge, full of energy, like an exposed nerve. They walk silently down the hall, side by side, looking for a place to sit that isn’t behind a closed door.</p><p>But she’s shaking suddenly, and Steve says something but she can’t hear it, because there’s something in the way of her hearing, a noise like screaming. She’s stopped walking and Steve turns to look at her—she can see the fear on his face and realizes that he’s seeing Bucky disintegrate in front of him, wondering if she’s about to do the same. She shakes her head and tries to speak: “No—fine—just panicking—” Her throat is closing up and she tries to remember how to breathe: in, out, in, out, in, out. Steve is still staring at her and then before she can do or say anything else, he walks closer, scoops her up, and starts carrying her bridal style down the dark hallway. He seems to be moving purposefully, and there’s no one she trusts more than Steve, so she closes her eyes and tries to let him handle it, tries to get her pounding heart back to normal, tries to breathe properly again.</p><p>It doesn’t seem like it’s very long afterward when he sets her down gently on something that gives a little. She opens her eyes. She’s on a sofa nestled in an alcove with a huge window that looks out over the plains they fought on yesterday. Steve sits down beside her for a moment, but huffs to himself in annoyance, gets back up, and starts stripping off the more uncomfortable pieces of his body armor, dropping them haphazardly on the floor as he goes. As she watches him she can feel her breathing slowing down. The noise in her ears hasn’t gone away, but it’s faded to something she can manage to ignore, which will have to be good enough for now.</p><p>She realizes that the sofa is shoving her gun belt into her ribs and starts fumbling at the clasp, grateful for something to do. But her fingers are clumsy, still shaking with adrenaline and dehydration, and she can’t quite get it. She growls in annoyance and then Steve’s hands are on the clasp, opening it with irritating ease. And she’s tired and empty and so it slips out before she can think better of it. “Well, Rogers, you could at least have bought me dinner before the clothes started coming off.”</p><p>She can see even in the dimness of the alcove that he turns red, and she wonders that he can still be embarrassed by her clumsy innuendo at a time like this, but he doesn’t say anything as he finishes pulling her gun belt off and drops it on the floor at her end of the couch. He’s apparently rid of everything he wants to be rid of and sits down beside her, almost falling into the cushions. They stare unseeingly ahead of them, down a hall that intersects the one they just walked, until she can’t take it any longer. “Sorry,” she says quietly. “I don’t know why—”</p><p>“No,” he cuts her off. “It’s fine. I know you didn’t mean anything by it. And if that’s the worst way you react to this whole situation then you’re doing pretty well.”</p><p>She laughs humorlessly. “You and I both know that I have plenty of time to react worse, Steve.”</p><p>There’s another pause and then she speaks again. “What the hell are we going to do now?”</p><p>He sighs. “That’s what I’ve been asking myself every waking minute since that bastard—” He can’t finish the sentence, and it takes a moment for him to start talking again, but when he does he can’t stop. “I don’t know. I just don’t. My whole life has been about doing what’s right, what has to be done, what other people can’t or won’t do. But I have no idea now. How do we even start? How do we reverse what he did? Is it even possible? He did it and then he vanished. He could be anywhere in the universe by now and those damned stones are with him. We have no way of finding him, so we have no way of fixing it.”</p><p>He pauses for a minute. “God help us, what wouldn’t I give for Tony right now? He always has an idea, even if it’s a bad one it’s something. But I’m out, Nat. I’m lost. No, damn it, I lost him—I lost Bucky again, after all this time I failed him again, just like I failed Sam and Wanda and Vision and God knows who else—” His voice breaks, and he buries his head in his hands.</p><p>She reaches out and puts a hand on his shoulder and they sit like that for a long time, while he shakes with quiet sobs. She wonders why she can’t cry. Maybe she finally became the thing she was meant to be all those years ago—a tool, with no feelings of her own. She doesn’t say anything because she doesn’t know what to say and that in itself proves to her that she’s not a tool. The thing they had wanted her to become would be more competent, would know what to say to fix the man beside her or at least to use the last bits of him before he breaks beyond repair. But she doesn’t. Or won’t. She’s not sure anymore which it is or which would reflect better on her. She’s so tired.</p><p>After what feels to Natasha like a small eternity, Steve straightens up. He won’t look at her, but she watches him carefully. His jaw is set and he’s got that burning intensity that makes people want to follow him to hell and back. Well, most people. It’s never been particularly effective on her because she knows that there are so many sides of him that she likes so much better and that hurt him so much less.</p><p>When he speaks again, he sounds almost strangled with anger, or maybe something else, something softer. “It’s just, you spend your whole life trying to be ready, trying to be as good as you can be so that when the time comes you can do the one thing you were meant to do. And then—you fail. I can’t wrap my mind around it.”</p><p>And she’s angry, suddenly. She pulls her hand back and crosses her arms in front of her and takes a deep breath. “That’s bull, Rogers, and you know it. Or have you forgotten who you’re talking to? I started getting trained for the one thing I was meant to be when I was barely old enough to walk and then I failed at it before I was even old enough to rent a damned car. I couldn’t kill Clint—” <em>maybe he’s dead now</em>, her mind whispers, but she shoves it down— “and I couldn’t even get him to kill me. And there I was, barely even an adult, and I had to live with the fact that I had failed at my one job. And I know damned well that it was a terrible job and every day when I wake up I think about how glad I am that I failed and how I wish so much that I had failed sooner, before— before things happened that I couldn’t change. But it was still a failure, Rogers. And I still had to pick myself up and start something else.” There’s a pause. Maybe she’s finally shocked poor Steve into silence.</p><p>She sighs. “I guess, what I’m trying to say is, maybe you’re right. Maybe we failed at the one thing that we couldn’t stand to fail. I’m not willing to accept it yet—there’s just too much we don’t know. But if you’re right, and we did fail, that doesn’t mean we’re useless. That’s one thing I’ve learned, besides how to kill most efficiently and how to find and exploit someone else’s every weak point. You’re a soldier—for you, there’s always a war, and once we win it, the world will be right. But I’m a spy, Steve, and for me there’s no war. It’s just one mission after another, and if this mission fails and you’re still alive somehow you go on to the next one. I think we have to think like spies now, Steve. Maybe we failed this mission. But then we figure out what our next one is and we sure as hell don’t fail that. We work with what we have.”</p><p>He speaks quietly, surprising her. “You told me this before. ‘We have what we have when we have it.’”</p><p>“Well, that seems really profound and a little bit cryptic, so yeah, that would definitely be me.”</p><p>She catches the faintest ghost of a smile on his face and is surprised to feel the same ghost on hers.</p><p>They sit silently for a while longer, and she may actually be falling back asleep, when Steve breaks the silence once again. “You know, there’s something else you said once. Something about being all things to all people, and then you asked who I needed you to be. I said a friend, because I didn’t want to ask any more of you than everyone else already had, but I think I failed at that. Being my friend has historically not been great for a person’s life.”</p><p>She tries to interrupt, but he holds up a hand and keeps going. “I’m not going to apologize for it any further, since I know you’d just tell me off if I tried. But I am going to ask you, Nat. I’m not as flexible as you, in more ways than one, but who do you need me to be?”</p><p>She scoffs at him, her stomach icy with a feeling she can’t quite place. “Me? I don’t need anything, Rogers. I never have. You know that.”</p><p>Is he rolling his eyes? It almost looks like it, but he speaks again before she can call him on it. “Fine. You don’t need anything. But is there anything you want? Right now?”</p><p>She stares at him for a minute, and he stares back. He won’t look away. It’s honestly pretty impressive. “Well,” she finally says, “I guess I could use a good pillow.”</p><p>She can see the emotions move across his face, simultaneous exasperation and amusement, followed by guilt for feeling even a hint of happiness at a time like this. But he doesn’t say any of it, just looks steadily back at her and says, “I think I can do that. I may have had people fall asleep on me before. Once or twice.” The corner of his mouth twitches.</p><p>“Wow,” she says drily. “Used furniture. I should be so lucky.”</p><p>At that he really does roll his eyes, but he also starts wiggling around, trying to reach a pose somewhat closer to lying down. She really is tired and so, before either of them can get cold feet, she lies down, resting her head on his chest and yawning theatrically as she does so. “Wake me up whenever you need me, Rogers.” He just sort of rumbles in response—she can feel it under her ear—and after a minute she closes her eyes and tries to relax. After a minute or two more she can feel herself starting to drift. The last thing she remembers is something warm and heavy coming to rest on her shoulders—not a blanket, but something that makes her feel even safer.</p><p>✤✤✤</p><p>James Rhodes is really too old for all of this, which is what he’s muttering to himself as he climbs painfully to his feet, squinting against the bright Wakandan morning. Banner, Thor, and that really disturbing talking-raccoon-thing are all still asleep, but Cap and Nat are nowhere to be seen and a little flicker of fear twinges through him. He feels better a minute later—there’s no dust or ash or anything, so they probably didn’t disappear like the others. And at this point he’s not really worried about an attack from anything or anyone lesser than Thanos. He heads for the door, a little unsteady at first, like he usually is in the morning, even with the exoskeleton Tony made him. That was a mistake—he doesn’t want to think about Tony right now, or Pepper, or anyone else. It’s still too big. He needs some coffee.</p><p>He closes the door of their makeshift dormitory behind him, picks a direction pretty much at random, and starts to wander down the hall. The place seems deserted, which he guesses isn’t too surprising, given that roughly half of its typical population is no longer there to fill it. He passes a lot of mysterious doors on his right side, none of which he dares open, and a whole bunch of windows on his left. The view from all of them would normally be the beautiful Wakandan countryside but now it’s ripped up, trampled, and covered with the corpses of Thanos’s creatures. After a while, he stops looking.</p><p>He comes to the end of the hallway and stops dead. There’s a little alcove on his left, not much bigger than the sofa that fills it. And the sofa itself is filled with two people he knows. He blinks a few times. Assuming his eyes aren’t playing tricks on him, then yes, that’s Captain America sprawled out on a sofa, his head thrown back against it and his mouth half-open as he sleeps. And curled up next to him—or is it on top of him? maybe both?—is Natasha Romanoff, also asleep. Cap’s arm is curled around her shoulders, and as Rhodey stares at them in shock, Nat opens her eyes and stares back.</p><p>She speaks in a whisper a minute later. “Can I help you with something?”</p><p>“Uh, no,” he whispers back, rather awkwardly. He’s just noticed a few little piles of what look like clothes on the floor near the sofa and he really doesn’t want to think about that any more. “I’m just looking for some breakfast and coffee. Especially coffee.”</p><p>“Ah. Well, let us know if you find some. I would bet that when Steve wakes up he’s going to be hungry.” She yawns, and Cap stirs slightly. Rhodey decides quickly that it’s time for him to move along.</p><p>“Yup. Absolutely. Will do. See you...later.” He hurries off along the hallway to the right. <em>Banner might not be very happy if he sees that</em>, he thinks. <em>Oh well. That’s above my paygrade.</em> Something in the air grabs his attention and he sniffs appreciatively. <em>Definitely coffee.</em> He keeps going.</p><p>Behind him, Steve Rogers is still asleep, though Nat thinks he probably won’t be for much longer given how bright the sunlight around them is. She certainly has no intention of going back to sleep, which means, she supposes, that she should get up and start working. Follow Rhodey’s lead and go looking for some breakfast, if nothing else. But she doesn’t. <em>Steve’s arm is over me</em>, she rationalizes. <em>If I moved, I might wake him up</em>. She knows it’s an excuse, but she lets it go. There’s still a gaping hole inside her, but at least, for the moment, she has this.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Thanks so much for reading!  This is actually my first published fic, so I hope you enjoyed it!  I really love Cap and Nat as characters, and it was great to focus on them a bit more.  You may not have noticed, but there are definitely some references to other MCU films or deleted scenes.  One was quite intentional and obvious, one is less obvious, and one was not intentional at all, and those are just the ones I remember off the top of my head!  Thanks again for reading, and if you have any comments I'd love to hear from you!</p></blockquote></div></div>
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